A Second Home for Heady Topper

A second brewery and a new regularly canned beer are in the works for Vermont’s The Alchemist Brewery. John and Jen Kimmich, owners of the Waterbury, VT, brewery, announced in January that they are planning to open a second brewery with a retail shop and tasting room attached—good news for lovers of their canned double IPA, Heady Topper.

The original brewery, which produces 9,000 barrels of Heady Topper a year, was forced to close its retail space to the public in November, because of traffic and retail permitting issues. The Kimmiches originally planned to open a new retail shop in town to sell their beer and goods, but had difficulty finding a space.

They decided to redirect their effort toward opening a second brewery with a retail space attached, so they could also brew more beer to meet the skyrocketing demand for Heady Topper, as well as produce old pub favorites.

The new brewery will also produce The Alchemist’s second-ever canned beer, Focal Banger, an American IPA brewed with Mosaic and Citra hops. The Alchemist has been brewing a line of draft-only beers since fall 2013 and will also be releasing former pub beers Beelzebub, an Imperial stout, and Crusher, an Imperial IPA, on draft, and hinted at experimenting with canning Petit Mutant, an American-style wild ale.